Images of Other Garden RRs

Thumbnail glimses of Bob and Eleanor Batt's Sun City Citrus Railroad, Tony and
Adrienne Vacek's Eagle Pass "G" Scale Garden RR, Jack and Shirley Slinkard's J & S
Shortline and Richard and Norma Dodge's Rock Creek Railroad. We spend a couple
of days in Phoenix visiting and taking images of other railroads. Had a great time.

28 Images of the magnificent garden railroad at the Living Desert in Palm Desert, California
featuring 3 separate loops to run up to 6 trains on the main layout, plus a European mountain
cog train, 2 separate loops and a cable car. Other features include a replica of the Grand
Canyon, Mount Rushmore and a 200 foot wooden looped trestle.....

A Saturday visit to the MLS (Maricopa Live Steamers layout to help build track, enjoy riding
trains and just having fun with other railroaders... There are some wonderfully detailed
handcrafted coal and oil fired live steam engines as well as great running hard pulling gasoline
powered diesel replicas running on this vast system....... It was a great day.....

While visiting family in Southern Illinois in February 2002, I had a chance to attend the
Monday night meeting of the Gateway Model RR Club where Ric Golding spoke about
operating procedures of his Kaskaskia Valley Railway. There were about 50 members in
attendance. Met another "G" gauger at the meeting, Jim Agnew who has 2 finely detailed
indoor layouts and an outdoor one that is operational from late Spring to early Winter as
weather permits.

On a cool and blustry morning, Greg Vocks for Taylorville, Illinois and I met at Ric's
Kaskaskia Valley Railway for a running session. Greg was able to test run his new
BBT/Dave Goodson R/C converted Bachmann Ten Wheeler. Even though it was chilly and
windy, we had a great time. Now and then we retreated to the house for hot drinks, good
cookies and "railroad talk".

Whenever we travel, it's such a pleasure to visit in person other railroaders we've met on

MyLargescale.com..... One such visit happened on April 5th when we were treated to a

tour of Bill Milliron's layout and "train shop" in Henderson, Nevada.... Bill has a wonderful collection
of engines and rolling stock that he lovingly cares for in the "train shop" at his home... His layout has
been started in his back yard with a continuous loop, reversing switches, industrial sidings and many
scratchbuilt and kitbashed buildings, vehicles and figures.... The day was bright and sunny, the train
talk very informative and a time for MLSer's to get to know each other......

On an extended trip to the midwest in May 2002, we were visiting friends in Rockford, Michigan and
learned of a man who had a "train setup" at his mobile home park in Cedar Springs about 15 miles north
of Rockford. Our friend, Mike Bixler and I drove up there one morning just to see what this "train
setup" looked like. In no way were we prepared for what our eyes were to behold and what we were
to experience during our visit.

The White Creek Railroad is really some "train setup." Over six and a half miles of 7 1/2 inch track
runs from a 4 bay double garage door building that is attached to a complete machine and wood
working shop. 15 storage tracks enter this building with each track filled with Dash-9's, F units, NW-
2's, steam engines and a countless other rolling stock.

Russ Eldred has created this magnificent kingdom of trains that is shared and maintained by many
volunteers and other workers that come from all over the US to train meets each month. The images in
this "slide show" were taken on a special tour that Russ provided to Mike and me.

The first image is a diagram of the entire layout. If you can print that file and use the hard copy to follow
each of the images, it will help you to see the magnitude of this huge kingdom.of model railroading.

Enjoy

In May, 2002, we visited Marty and Carrie Cozad's beautiful garden railroad in rural
Nebraska City, Nebraska. It was a delightful day with a heavy overcast and the
threatning of rain, but that's just a normal late Spring day in the Midwest. It was cool and
when we arrived, Marty had an R/C battery powered diesel on the main line pulling a
very long consist.

The first thing you see on the NTCGRR is the huge, magnificent custom, hand built
arched bridge. It's over 20 feet long, 8 feet high and passes over a gorge that Marty has
carved out the side of the hill. There are many, many diaramas and other hand crafted
items of interest. It's a wonderful place to visit and "play trains."